Wednesday, May 24, 2006

jBlackGlass Rockbox Themes - iPod Video

I've just finished making some new rockbox themes, using Win Media Player 11 design elements, I know, there is already one which is pretty good, but I had something else in my mind, so here is the result:

As you can see there are 11 themes in this package, I used a few of my preferred background images, but feel free to use your one, you can get the psd file from here, just add your background image and save the result to your theme directory. See here for more details about creating rockbox themes.

Copyright: hmmm, good subject :). I think WMP11 is done by Microsoft :) and the background were created by different people, but I don't really know which one was made by who, so please don't be mad at me if you don't see your name here, just send me a letter and I will put it up, but I would like to thank you in advance for this great wallpapers and I hope you don't mind seeing them here.

Note: Stev just pointed out that the "jellyfish" background was made by the Digital Blasphemy art team, so I would like to thank them! and some of the other backgrounds are from DeviantArt, so thanks to them and to the authors too!

NOTE2: A lot of people asked me for the font (nimbus-14.fnt) which is used by the theme, and because the fonts are provided by rockbox I didn't pack them into my themes, so VERY IMPORTANTdownload the latest font package from the rockbox server and you should have the right fonts.

I just had to come back man, cause this theme just does my head in. I've been digging rockbox and the features, but haven't been completely blown away. It's still a little buggy, and the port to ipod has a ways to go, but now that I have it looking like this, none of that matters!

You've done a stellar job, and I have to say on a side note, as far as copyright goes, I'm sure Microsoft would be more than happy to see their intellectual works on an Apple product.

My only gripe, and it goes to the patches that are necessary for the larger toolbar, is that the onscreen keyboard is cutoff. That thing needs some work for ipod too, it's tiny and only takes up 2/3 of the ipod video screen.

Those jellyfish are reminiscent of Digital Blasphemy. If you wanted some more themes, you could easily pop one of those behind it.

Oh, and if the little clock in the corner could actually update, that would be unreal too.

Anyhoo, great work, keep it up, can't wait to see what you come out with next.

Hi Steve, I'm happy that you find your way to rockbox :) I know there are some glitches which have to be ironed out, but overall it works pretty good, and it's a lot more useful than the original apple firmware, and the best thing is that you can always change anything you want, which is a must for me :)

Regarding the onscreen keyboard, could you please give me more info where I should look for that bug, I don't really use it, I just tried it out with the Text Editor plugin and everything was fine, so it would be great if you could give me more info on this one.

Thanks for the note regarding the jellyfish, I added a note to the copyright and linked it to their page.

Regarding the clock in the corner, for the moment I don't think there is a way for doing such a thing, maybe I could make some changes in the rockbox wps code, but I prefer not to do so because rockbox is under heavy development and I cant keep the patch synchronized and there is already a lot going on on the playback screen :) but the idea is pretty good and I promise I will implement it as soon as it gets a bit easier :)

Yeah, I had a feeling the clock in the corner would be pretty tricky. I thought I'd throw it out there cause it would definitely be cool, but it's totally a minor issue and I wouldn't worry about recoding Rockbox just for it - plenty of time to get to that stuff :)

As far as the onscreen keyboard goes, the text editor seems to work fine because it loads its own background and doesn't show the status bar at all. The best place to check this is under 'Manage Settings' from the Main Menu, then write CFG file. Another option would be 'Search by Artist' if you have your view set to 'ID3 Database'.

I don't really use the onscreen keyboard all that much, so it's far from a dealbreaker, but if these patches are going to be incorporated into a daily build (which I think they should be) then it will be something that will need to be addressed.

This is by far the best theme for ipod video. I really do love it. GREAT JOB!!!! If you happen to have more backdrops for your themes could you release those too... that would be awesome. Now when are they going to implement song ratings in rockbox... I need to filter out my music :)

After you successfully installed rockbox on your ipod, just download jbuild from here:http://solutions-i.org/julius/rockbox/(you should download the rockbox-jbuild-YYYYMMDD-ipodphoto.zip)and unzip this to your ipod. When unzipping it should ask you to overwrite the files, and be sure that you say yes to it.

Hello everyone. First of all, congratulations for your hard work. You know we all appreciate it very much.I have a doubt here. I can´t find a way to put the album art working. I have your prebuild installed, and i know I have the covers as I had it before putting rockbox. If you can explain me how to solve this, i would be really pleased.Thank you

Hmm, I'm not sure what could be wrong, please be sure you have cover.bmp in the same directory in which you have your mp3s, and the bmp should be a 24-bit bitmap with no compression.

I hope this will fix your problem, but if there is something in jbuild you could test it out by trying other prebuiled binary which has support for covers, and if that works then the bug is in jbuild, otherwise something is wrong with your bmps (or at least I think so).

Hi there, mate!Everything looks good, i've got one problem though : (Everything on my ipod seems to have collapsed to the left (video ipod)And the main menu is right up the top, touching the little bar thing that you have...Any way of fixing this?

Great theme, Excellent work.Questions: I installed your themes while using the standeard rockbox build not your custom build. Do I have to go thru the whole uninstall/re-install process again or is there a faster way? Also, the track info (track name, artist, etc) is not showing up. What am I missing?

Hey Julius, great theme man. I'm thinking (very deeply) about installing Rockbox on my iPod and this theme is really appealing to me (#2 is the Clix theme). So, now, considering that previous statement, I am a totaly n00b with these patches and stuff, which leads me to humbly ask, do you have a "build" (as I see its called) with the album art capabilities? I really appreciate any help, I'd love to do this Rockbox thing, but I'm very attatched to my album art... Thank you :)

I've got the newest version and binaries, latest build of Rockbox... how do I get album art working? I'm still seeing the crazy calendar/calculator thingie on the left side of the Now Playing screen. Thanks mang!

Love your theme but im having some trouble, same sort of problems as boogie_doggiedoes anyone know where i can find the manual, ive got rockbox on my ipod just having some trouble configuring the themes etc

After you successfully installed rockbox on your ipod, just download jbuild from here:http://solutions-i.org/julius/rockbox/(you should download the rockbox-jbuild-YYYYMMDD-ipodphoto.zip)and unzip this to your ipod. When unzipping it should ask you to overwrite the files, and be sure that you say yes to it.

After this download the theme package from:http://solutions-i.org/julius/rockbox/themes/(you should look for jBlackGlass-ipodphoto-YYYYMMDD.tar.gz) and unpack it to your ipod.

You might want to note that when unpacking jBlackGlass-5g-20060929.tar.gz it needs to be unpacked to the .rockbox directory. I am a newb to rockbox and could not load your theme I was able to load the wps but no themes showed up in my themes list this was due to theme unpacking in the root of the ipod and not in the .rockbox directory. I am most likely not the first to run across this and most likely a simple mistake but you might want to make a note for others like myself. Just like to add thanx for the awsome Theme I am very impressed.Thax again,

Thanks so much for putting time into such an awesome theme. I have a few questions. first the play/pause menu that you have in your screenshots i cant get to show up. ive downloaded your presets for ipod 5gen. also my track info shows up way up top of the screen in the header bar. any info on this is much appreciated. thanks again!

Hi,I was just wondering if there was any chance that you would would release an awesome theme like this that would work well on an ipod nano...If so, sign me up! but I don't know how tough that would be or what not... just a thought, I know a lot of people who use rockbox on the nano would probably like that.

Hey I'm completely new at this, and I have no idea how to patch these files such as custom_list_position.patch, I've gone through lots of forums and guides on how to do it, but it's all too overwhelmingly confusing i even downloaded some crazy program VMware Player but no luck. if you could explain to me how to apply this patch or at least refer me to a good guide it would be much appreciated.

Hey I'm completely new at this, and I have no idea how to patch these files such as custom_list_position.patch, I've gone through lots of forums and guides on how to do it, but it's all too overwhelmingly confusing i even downloaded some crazy program VMware Player but no luck. if you could explain to me how to apply this patch or at least refer me to a good guide it would be much appreciated. Thanks a bunch

Ahh sorry stupid noob question...but every time I try and load the theme it doesn't work: it says "No Partition Found. Insert USB Cable and fix it"I've been scouring the forums and I can't find anything to help me out(I have a 5g 30gb iPod); I downloaded the various builds but none of those work either...help please?? Thanks!

First of all thanks for all the posts you made and then please accept my apologies for not getting back to you earlier, I really try to do my best to handle my private things too but unfortunately lately there was to much work on me so I wasn't able to get back to you guys.

Anyway, here is the current situation so you all know about it:As you can see I wasn't able to make new builds in the last few months and I think I won't be able to do so in the next few ones too, but after that I hope/think/looks like things will cool down a bit and I will be able to pick up the work again on the rockbox patches/builds because I really miss it, so if you can please wait a bit more and you should have some new builds to play with.

To the ones who have the "no partition found error" I think there are two things that can happen to you, first of all you arent' using my builds and you are using the themes, or you are using the builds but you have to reset your ipod. Just try to swith the hold button on when you turn your ipod on and that should reset the rockbox settings so that should help (or at least I hope so)

No regarding future help, I recommend you guys to contact me trhough messenger I may not answer you all the time but you can be sure it will be a lot faster than commenting here and please don't be shy, if I won't answer you in the first just try again tomorrow and so on because there are days when I come home late so even if I have unanswered messenger windows I won't asnwer them because I'm to tired but next day I would do so, so just try again.

So guys, that would be the situation here, so just wanted to let you know that I'm not dead and I won't let my rockbox patches/themes die either.

Ok, so i just got rockbox a few days ago and i installed this theme and for some reason when its going this is the screen that i can see.. font is nimbus 14 and this is what it looks like when it is currently playing the song. I really like the way this theme looks can someone help me to fix this?

Regarding the iscrobbler log, hmm, I don't even know what it is :) I know the audioscrobble log or (if I'm right) Last.fm log which is added by default now, but the iscrobbler is unknown for me, but please fell free to download the latest source with all the patches already applied to it from here:rockbox-jbuild-source-YYYYMMDD.tar.gzand play around a bit if you feel like :)

Hi, thnx 4 the theme, it´s great !!! The only problem I find is that the text and the icons (battery in eg.)starts on the very top and overlaps the top bar. Also in the music player, I can´t see the song info because the text is placed below the control bar at the bottom. Any sugestion ???Thnx in advance.Martin Lans.

Are you aware that you have to use my builds instead of the official ones from the rockbox page? if yes and you are sure you are using them then please try to redownload the themes and try again, that should fix your problem.

Cheers,Julius

ps: regarding the status bar at the top while in menu, that isn't fixed unfortunately, I redid all the patches so they are compatible with other themes too so for now it will be at the top but I hope in not so far future I will be able to add that patch back to the builds.

im very new to rockbox i have struggled to get as far as i have setting it up. I have a 5gen 30gb ipod video i have got rockbox but it says its installation is incomplete ".no rockbox directory", i think there is supposed to be a folder called rockbox directory its supposed to be important and i dont have it, so i cant play anything, listen to anything, save the text and backdrops that you have showed. i know this doesnt have much to do with ur topics... but im seriously stuck no one has been able to help me ive tried as many place as i could please if you know how to fix this problem or have a theory im all ears and very grateful.

and extract the content to your ipod's root directory "/". So you plug your ipod's usb connector to your pc and it should apear on your pc as a usb disc now copy the content of the zip file to this disc.

and extract them to your ipod's root directory too "/" and now unplug your ipod and let it start up and it should now work.

Now to add music to your ipod just plug back in to your pc and copy the mp3 directories onto your ipod's root directory (again) "/" and the next time you start your ipod the mp3 directories will be shown and you can start navigating between them.

and extract the content of this package to your ipod's rockbox directory aka "/.rockbox/" and now restart your ipod and press menu go to "Browse Themes" menu and select one of the jClix themes and it should work.

Hi Julius, its Anonymous or woody as i am called again it has helped the problem now there are just a few other things now and all should be fine :) now there are 5 things on the start up screen backdrops, fonts, themes, wps and rockbox but the rockbox just restarts this has always been there now the one then had the rocks and other stuff is gone i dont think it can read the .rockbox file in the root of my ipod do u have any suggestions, like would it help/make it worse if i changed the name from .rockbox to say rockbox i have tried putting a name with a . at the front but it just says "type a file name" do you have and suggestions or any one else that would be helpful againany suggestions are helpful to me cuz im very new

If you see the directory list it means rockbox is running, so that's a good sign. Now you shouldn see all those directories you describe. Please make sure that you only have a ".rockbox/" directory and a "rockbox.ipod" file and that's it, nothing more nothing less. Now please make sure that you decompress the theme tar.gz file into the ".rockbox/" directory and not on the root directory "/".

is it compatible with 5.5g video ipods? rockbox works fine on my ipod but i can't seem to get the theme to work. i downloaded all the required files and have your rockbox build. just to check my work, would you be able to go through the installation step by step? i know its probably not what you want to do but youre the only one i can turn to - it would really help me a lot.

The new builds should work on the 5.5g ver too, I already had confirmations that it really works so I'm not sure about your problem.

Step by step instructions are over the blog and on the rockbox forum, but just for you here is another one:

(I asume that you already have some kind of rockox working on your ipod, if you don't please go here for more info)

1: Redownload all the custom builds from here2: Redownload the themes from here3: Extract the jbuild package to your ipod's root directory "/" (if asked overwrite all files)4: Extract the theme packages to your ipod's .rockbox directory "/.rockbox/"5: Disconnect your ipod and when it starts turn the "hold" button on so it resets the ipod settings6: Go to the "Browse themes" menu and select the theme which should work just fine7: Enjoy :)

I don't know if you're still looking over this blog, but I've got a 5g 30g video ipod. I've double checked the instructions you gave several times and I'm certain I'm doing everything you've said but I still can't seem to get your theme to work. I install/extract the current build, then install/extract your custom build (both to root on the ipod) and then I extract your theme to /rockbox. But when I start up the ipod I get only a "Rockbox" item in the menu which reloads rockbox. If I press menu I get some (but not all) of the system settings. Can't access music at all. Do you have any ideas?

Hey I think these themes are really awesome, very esthetically pleasing. I am having issues with my ipod video. it wont show any details when playing a song. I am new to rockbox so if I don't know what to do. Once again great themes

This theme is just so AWESOME! Even though it's not on my 5.5 30GB iPod (yet) it's still the best I've ever seen!

Anyway, I'm really new to Rockbox, and I've read every single instruction on here (not sure I've followed them correctly tho).I've installed+extracted the 5G jbuild (is there a difference between the 5g64MB??) to replace the rockbox build and then downloaded all the themes to the .rockbox/themes folder.I just don't know how to patch the files! Like where do I put them and HOW do I put/set/whatever them? xDJulius, I read the reply you made to Roster but frankly I just didn't understand... please forgive my ultimate n00bness! ^-^;

lol sorry I managed to get the theme onto my iPod, didn't need the patches after all, but now whenever I play any song at around 15-25 seconds there's this sudden noise, the music stops, all the text disappears and then this comes up :"Undefined instruction [or] Prefetch abort at D71C53B8"

and after that, this sometimes comes up

"Data abort at4000000E"

the numbers aren't always the same but they're something like that. Anyway whenever this happens I have to reboot the iPod using menu+select because nothing else works! So how do I get the songs to play? Help!

I don't really know much about the data abort error but it shouldn't happen that's for sure, what build did you install on your ipod? the 64MB version or the 32MB one? what ipod do you have? btw, the difference between the 64MB and the normal one (aka 32MB) is that some of the 5g ipod videos (i think the ones with 60gb hdd) have 64mb memory while the others only 32, so if you don't have a 5g with 60gb hdd use the normal build and not the 64mb one. I think that should fix the problem.

Regarding new builds as you guys may already noticed I didn't do any lately and there is a reason for it, one is that I the patches that I wrote were picked up by others like Max and so on (Thanks guys for it!) so there are other build which include these patches that you can use, so it may be better if you use those builds and download the theme packages from the rockbox org cos that should be more current.

man u r the best,i have seen ur themes on moi friends ipod's and they rock can u pls tell me how to put the thmes into my ipod video(30 gb),cause am totally new to all this,pls help me and can u tell me in detail.

Unfortunately these themes/patches are soooo outdated so you won't really be able to use them anymore but rockbox seems to be making good progress on the "viewport" patch (at least) so as soon as they have it done I will repost the themes with those changes and you should be able to use them without the need for custom builds, so if you can please hold on for a bit longer till they finish the viewport patch and if you can't just browse around in the rockbox's forum for custom builds and as I know there is a build which has the patches applied but you may need to do some changes yourself to get them running.

hi, firstly thanks for those great themes! the best i could find so far for my ipod 5g :) but there's an issue i've been suffering. i know you answered here on several times, but will there be an jpeg albumart support for this ? i mean, the answers were outdated, so i just wanna know if it's been made since this time period, and sorry but i couldn't find albumart patched versions of themes, thanks again for those themes, Arda

whoops..i shoulda mentioned I'm trying to use the 4G one on my iRiver H320..same resolution but I believe they say themes before August 08 won't work in RB 3.0 and will show up as the default RB setting

Unfortunately as you have already noticed all the rockbox themes are old and unsupported, but you could do a search on rockbox's forum for ports as I know some people have ported this theme over to the new rockbox so hopefully you will find some.